Led Zeppelin, -

Friday, 21st December 2007

Industry veteran, and legendary front-of-house (FOH) engineer "Big" Mick Hughes, who has been involved in live sound engineering with bands such as Def Leppard, Ozzy Osbourne, Slipknot, Steve Vai, UB40, and Rob Halford, as well as an incredible 23 year association with Metallica, recently got the call to engineer the most anticipated, Mother of all reunion gigs, Led Zeppelin at the London 02 arena which was a tribute concert in memory of Atlantic Record boss, Ahmet Ertegun.

"I?ve recently had the Earthworks mics on evaluation from UK distributor Unity Audio for another project and was seriously impressed with the results, their extended high frequency response gives a fantastic openness and clarity, which was perfect for Led Zeppelin's dynamic open drum sound. Essentially, I used several of the DK25/L drum mic sets, each coming with 3x SR25 1/2" diameter cardioids, and a KickPad, which is an XLR in-line filter optimised for kickdrums, long with two, top of the line SR30 cardioids".

"I had a main X/Y pair pointing down above Jason?s head, to get an overall top kit sound, and another pair of SR25?s on the extreme outer edges of the kit, pointing down and slightly away from the centre of the kit to handle the cymbals on either side. For snare, I used an SR25 underneath, and a SM57 on top. For kick, I used a combination of SR25 just outside the sound hole, and a Beta 52 just inside, both had the Earthworks KickPad in-line filters. The SR30 was used on the top side of the hi-hat, with another SR30 for the timpani, the new Earthworks, goose necked Periscope series P30 was used underneath the main ride cymbal, which I could position to capture a nice balance between the bell of the cymbal and the stick".

"I?m using the new Midas digital XL8 console, and that allowed me in the sound check to record impulse responses from all the drum mics from a single snare hit, then analyse all the mic waveforms and enter precise delay information on the Midas to compensate for phase issues, resulting in a really solid sounding kit. I?m now really looking forward to using the Earthworks for the next Metallica tour".